Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,120
excitable.”
“You let something like that roam around your library?”
Aelius shrugged. “First off, it’s not my library. It belongs to Our Lady of Blessed Murder. I’m just the one who chronicles what’s innit. And I don’t let the bookworms roam around, they just … do.” The old man shrugged. “Funny old place, this.”
“Funny…,” Mia breathed.
“Well, not haha funny, obviously.”
Aelius plucked another cigarillo from behind his ear. Lighting it on his own, he held it out to the girl with ink-stained fingers.
“Smoke?”
The fear still coiled in Mia’s belly, her nerves in tatters. Perhaps a cigarillo would calm her down. And so, as the old man grinned, she mooched across the aisle and took the smoke with trembling fingers. They stood there for long, silent moments, Mia savoring the taste of the sugarpaper on her lips as her pulse finally slowed to somewhere near normal. Blowing plumes in Tric’s direction, and smirking as he wrinkled his nose and coughed.
“Good smokes, these,” she finally said.
“Aye.”
“Don’t recognize the maker’s mark, though.”
“He’s dead.” Aelius shrugged. “Don’t make ’em like this anymore.”
“Like these books?”
“Eh?”
Mia motioned to the shelves. “I recognize some of the titles. They aren’t supposed to exist. It makes sense now I think about it. This is a Church to the goddess of murder.”
Tric blinked as realization dawned. “So Niah’s library is filled with books that have died?”
Aelius looked at the pair through the smoke, slowly nodded.
“Some,” he finally said. “Some are books that were burned. Or forgotten ages past. Some never got the chance to live at all. Abandoned or half-imagined or just too frightening to begin. Memoirs of murdered tyrants. Theorems of crucified heretics. Masterpieces of geniuses who ended before their time.”
Mia looked around the shelves. Shaking her head. What wonders were hidden in these forgotten and unborn pages? What horrors?
“And the … worms?” she exhaled.
“Not sure where they’re from, to be honest.” Aelius shrugged. “Maybe one of the books? Things in these pages don’t always stay on the pages, if you get my drift. They only come out if they think the words are in danger. Or if they get, y’know … hungry.”
“What do they eat?” Tric asked.
The old man fixed the boy in his stare. “What do you reckon?”
“We’ve been here nearly four months.” Mia dragged deep on her cigarillo. “You don’t think this is the kind of thing the Ministry should mention on your first turn? ‘O, by the by, Acolytes, there’s these colossal fucking wormthings that live in the library, so for Maw’s sake, get your books back on time’?”
“What if more acolytes sneak in here alone?” Tric asked. “Mouser’s contest earns us six marks for every book stolen from the athenaeum.”
“Well, Mouser’s a bit of bastard, isn’t he?” Aelius said.
“What would happen if someone actually broke in here and tried to lift one?”
The old man smiled. “What do you reckon?”
Tric gawped. “Madness…”
“Look, the worms only bother folk who mess with the words. And if you’re fool enough to go faffing about with books like these, you deserve what you get. And aside all that, I did warn you.” Aelius blew a smoke ring at Mia’s face. “Told you when we first met that depending what aisle you walked down, you might never be seen again.”
“All right, then, for future reference, which aisles should we avoid?” the girl asked.
“It changes.” The old man shrugged. “This whole place changes time to time. New books appearing every other turn. Others moving to places I didn’t put them. Sometimes I find whole sections I never knew existed.”
“And you’re supposed to chronicle all this?”
Aelius nodded. “Bugger of a job, really.”
“You could get some help?” Tric offered.
“I had four assistants, once. Didn’t go so well.”
“Why? What happened to them?”
The old man looked at the boy sidelong. Three voices rang in the gloom simultaneously.
“What do you reckon?”
Mia blew a lungful of pale gray into the silence.
“… I don’t suppose there are any books on darkin in here, are there?”
The chronicler glanced down at her shadow. Back up to her eyes. “Why?”
“Is that a no?”
“It’s a ‘why.’ Wonderful thing about a library like this. Any book that ever was or wasn’t written is going to be in here eventually. Trouble is finding the bloody things. Lot of effort to look for something specific. And sometimes these books get chips on their shoulders. The burned ones ’specially. Sometimes they don’t want to be found.”
Mia felt hope sinking in her breast. She looked at Tric, who shrugged helplessly.
“But,” the old man said, looking her up and down. “You’ve